Two Eyes Cenote no, no, it's rightfully mine.

impatience seeped into qiao as the boy — sluggish! — did her bidding. she reminded herself that to rush was to invite peril — the many countryside graves that lined her path could attest to that.

once he placed the herbs and the haunch of meat upon the ground qiao went to work. his gaze found her in question - with a sigh erring towards stifled patience she answered: for the ensouling ritual. a half-truth, but did the boy need to know more?

she studied the night sky and listened to the wind. a single rhythm pulsed distantly and it was that line she plucked like a thread, chanting in an old tongue. she moved backwards around the shrine first, set the haunch of meat upon the strap of harvest grass, and oriented the skull to face the climbing zenith of a moon whose face dared not show in the darkness.

next she pulled the hawk’s talon from the plinth. she bound it with a snare of harvest grass and affixed its gruesome edge through the left eye of the wolf-skull. her voice, a symphony of snarled words, clicks, and raspy guttural creaks, rose to a fevered crescendo.

upon herself she bound the bluestem to her wrist, painting her left arm with white clay. to the boy, she ascribed a chiseled rune of three claw marks of clay to his breast. he stood still as he was instructed, while the crone whirled around him.

the night, as if waiting for this very moment, suddenly rose to life. wind roared as its jagged edges bound through trees and at last settled against the hard edge of the cenote’s stone; tree frogs began their crazed creaking — the whoop of a night heron punctuated the dark, followed by the panicked scream of its prey. qiao’s lamplight eyes danced with the power of her ritual, and she turned to rowdy, the last remaining partner to their strange and obscene dance.

it was then that rowdy’s true nightmare began.